The Presidency: Challenge & Swift Response

"There's something about the man that
reacts to a Kennedy," an aide remarked last week of Lyndon Johnson. To
be sure, there is something about the President that reacts to any
meaningful challenge to his authority, but the response is reflex and
relentless when the defial comes from a Kennedy. True to form, scarcely
48 hours after Robert F. Kennedy became an open rival for the
presidency, Johnson launched a massive counterattack. During a week
whose pace and tempo seemed more attuned to the windup of a bitter
election than to its...